Loki: Heroes of Mythology is an RPG in the mould of the classic Diablo games, but with a history-spanning twist in the generic tail: your characters are various ancient heroes who have direct contact with mythical gods, and the plot revolves around the Egyptian deity Seth — he of chaos, evil, and plenty more unpleasant things — breaking free from his eternal tomb, deciding that the world needs a good sorting-out and wreaking havoc amid the four worlds that you inhabit during the game. It's an interesting concept for an RPG that lets you hop between several distinct environments, and one worth exploring for any fan of the genre.

The basic characters you're given tick all the boxes for typical RPG roles: there's a Norse warrior who wields an impressively hefty beard and a weighty-looking axe, an athletic Greek fighter, a magic-infested Egyptian sorcerer and a nature-abiding Aztec Shaman to control. Each character, also, has their homeland: a chilly, snowy village full of log-cabins somewhere in Scandinavia, a clean, bright Greek city, a dusty Egyptian village and a plant-infested Amazonian settlement.

These serve as launch-pads for the majority of Loki: Heroes of Mythlogy's action-filled gameplay. Typically, a god will give you quests — it's Athena in the Greek town, for example — and direct you towards the portal to the battlefield levels where most of the fighting takes place. From the beginning you're given a ring that enables you to transport to any unlocked portal, anywhere else in the game world — so as you play with different characters, you can teleport to a completely different area of the game to fight and complete quests and test out your hero against new enemies.

The plot of the game is what catapults you across the various environments — as you soon find out that you have to defeat evil Egyptian god Seth — he's broken out of the cage that Osiris locked him up in — by chasing him across the various worlds and, eventually, to his dark and murky underworld to take on the man himself. Each world you play in also has it's own set of quests and storylines, giving Loki a multi-pronged feel as you try to take on both local problems and specific gods as well as the omnipresent Seth. It's a decent system that lets you customise your character more than you otherwise would be able to by mixing and matching items, weapons and clothing from across the globe — although annoying when you come across a particularly desirable item and find that if can only be warn by a certain race of folk.

This system of world-hopping and god-destroying manifests itself in pretty standard RPG fashion. Experience points are earned for slaying one of the varied selection of myth-inspired foes (Cyclopes, centaurs and other assorted beasts all appear) and help to raise you through levels, earning better attributes and skill points as you go. These points can be used in several different technology trees, each aligned to a god. The Aztec Shaman, for example, can unlock skills based upon the creature-summoning of Quetzalcoatl, and the Norse axe-wielder can call upon Thor to improve how he handles his big chopper. Ahem.

As well as a traditional system of levelling-up and skill improvement, your home village also has the usual assortment of merchants and blacksmiths so you can equip yourself with armour or weapons to improve your fighting. A great weapon system has also been implemented that lets you re-forge your arms in new metals — making them stronger — or take apart your weaponry and re-assemble it with new components to make entirely new objects. This is, thankfully, a feature that will breath life into the game mechanics that have been mostly stolen from other titles.

The combat is resolutely simple, and takes place on battlefields hugely reminiscent of Diablo's generated dungeons. It's an easy system to learn — right-click on the enemy to hack them to pieces — but the blows, most of the time, feel meaty and suitably painful as you swing axes and cast spells. The relentless hacking and slashing can, though, become monotonous — as is, inexplicably, the constant need to re-arm your character, who seems to put his weapons away as soon as he loses sight of an enemy — as you carve your way through crowds of Amazons and centaurs. Monotony does, sometimes, rear it's ugly head in the missions; no amount of epic-sounding voice acting and dangerous-sounding questing can disguise the fact that most of your missions involve you ploughing through more enemies and destroying something. Longevity is added, thankfully, in the multiplayer modes that allow you to play through the game's quests in teams or fight each other.

Graphically, Loki: Heroes of Mythology is a step up from it's predecessors. Cyanide have built an entirely 3D world for you to roam around in, with a versatile camera allowing for any number of viewpoints. The graphics are atmospheric if a little unspectacular — especially given the system-hog that this game is — casting shadows in all the right places and allowing for menacing, intimidating enemies to strut up to you before you smack them down. Each world has a distinct style, as you'd expect, and your hero is suitably exaggerated in the finest of comic-strip traditions: the Aztec looks as if he's made from trees, the Norseman is absolutely huge, the Greek is lithe, supple and athletic and the Egyptian magician is as ethereal as you'd want him to be. Sound, too, is just as impressive — music pumps through the game to set the scene and the various voices have all been professional recorded with enough menace and Charlton Heston-esque epic shouting to convey the severity of Seth's seething anger.

That said, there's nothing here you haven't seen before. It's all very well done — and will please anyone with a hack-n-slash craving who just needs to devour levels and experience points like a Sims fan munches on expansion packs. The combat is meaty, the character development solid if unremarkable — save for the interesting weapon-forging system. Graphically, it's a tremendously attractive game, with powerful spells lighting up the screen and enemy monsters looking threatening and angry. It doesn't do anything new, but does the RPG genre very well indeed — even if your fingers ache after all that sword-waving, one-click combat.